These are my girls from Spark: Cinnamon, Mekina, Cassi, Amy, Jess and Debbie (we’re just missing Lisa.) They are some of the most talented & creative photographers, hardest working girl bosses, and sweetest & loving friends a girl could ask for. They have seriously poured so much into my life and my business.

A couple of years ago the ladies  that made up Spark threw Ignite, a free photography workshop in Central Park. This time the  Spark ladies decided to throw Ignite at Jess’s farm house in the Poconos. And because they ladies were so generous they threw it for free again. There were so many people interested that they opened the workshop for a second day and had a second group of photographers come. So these pictures are from both days of workshops.

In the days leading up to the workshop the Poconos got a lot of snow. Some of the husbands were so sweet and shoveled snow for us and made sure all the attendees arrived safe.

A big thank you to Penned by Alice for our beautiful name tags.

Jess’s house was so warm and cozy and decorated so cute!

As each attendee arrived I got to take almost each one of them outside for a couple of headshots.

Amy, Mekina and Cassi are the leaders of Spark and started the workshop off.

Amy started off the classes by talking about the client experience. She does a great job at making her couples feel special and I definitely got some great ideas!

Mekina talked about second shooting for other photographers since she’s seriously the guru.

Cinnamon talked about blogging and made is seem so much less scary and SEO more accomplishable.

Kate from Kate and Co. Events came to help with behind the scenes setup. We were all so thankful for her help!! Thanks to Mekina for this picture of Kate and I and to Amy for this picture of myself.

Cassi makes some of the best faces! hahaha I’m bummed that I missed most of Cassi’s class about albums on both days since I was helping with the styled shoot. But I heard it was really good and helped so many people!

Isn’t Debbie the cutest? Debbie talked about it never being to late to follow your dream and she inspired so many people. There were even some tears in the room.

That’s Debbie’s husband, Jeff, in the background. It was so cute to see how he looked at her. They just had their 37th wedding anniversary and are still so in love with each other.

Jess was all about posing couples and we all got some great tips on how she gets her couples to be themselves in front of her camera.

Steph from Tone Media Group was sweet enough to come the first day and video the workshop.

It kept snowing off and on during Saturday’s workshop so Mekina got creative keeping snow off of everything for the styled shoot. : )

Kerry Patel Designs braved the cold and set up the amazing florals.

Kate hung out with Kerry in the cold and helped her with the florals too.

It was funny to hear all of the cameras clicking at once as the models would move into a new pose.

The not so glamours behind the scenes of Kerry turning the back of her car into her workbench. And I swear Amy was smiling like that the whole weekend. : )

Thanks to Amy for getting this shot of me shooting along with others.

Jess and her husband, Mike, have two ducks and Effie made an appearance the second day for some portraits. She definitely stole the show!

This was a huge deal for me! I’m scared to death of birds and usually fall to the ground whenever one gets anywhere near me. But “photographer Cassady” kicked in when Mike asked me to wipe Effie’s feet before we gave her to the models. Effie is a very sweet duck! Thanks Mekina for capturing this shot so I could prove to Ben that I did this!

Oh thank goodness this didn’t happen in front of everyone at the workshop, but while a couple of us were out setting up for the styled shoot I rushed over to get a shot that Jess had set up. It was shorter to go through the the 2.5 feet of snow rather than the longer path to Jess and Mekina when I tripped and went down. The only thing I could think of was to save my camera which is why, thanks to Mekina’s quick shooting, my camera is up in the air in this shot. And thanks to Lisa for this shot of Mekina and me.

How many photographers does it take to fix the models? Thanks for this shot Amy!

Everyone from the workshop on Saturday!

Everyone from the workshop on Sunday! (Minus Mekina and myself, we apparently didn’t get the memo. Whoops!)

And a fun one of the Spark ladies!

The Ignite workshop was such a fun weekend! It was definitely a lot of work, but it was also so rewarding and refreshing to learn so much and be with so many other photographers that want to work together instead of in competition. I think we all left that weekend on a high : )

I can’t wait to share my images from the styled shoot in my next blog post!!